Fly Free
by daysandweeks
Summary: Hermione and Ron do some growing up, moving on, and falling in love during the war. Written preDH.
1. One

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**one.xy**

After the first battle, Hermione is scared. Things are even crazier than she had imagined them to become. She wakes up three days after the battle ends, in a small bed in St. Mungo's. She has the room all to herself, so she sees nothing familiar aside from her body, which has many a scratch. Those are new.

She sits up and then tries to stand, but has difficulty. There are no mirrors in the room to see her face, so she can't see how that is. She is about to head over to the door when she catches sight of herself in a reflection on a small window.

The window is closed even though the weather was nice out the last time she had been outside. It is only early autumn, after all. She sees herself just barely in the glass, and notices that she is the same, but for a small gash on her eyebrow.

Inside the window, she sees a fly, trapped between the screen and the pane, unable to fit through the tiny pores of the screen. She wonders if she should let it out. But no, she does not; she just leaves it there to die as she heads over to the hospital room door.

She faints before she can reach it, and luckily just then, a nurse has come in to catch her when she falls.

**one.xx**

Ron is not as badly injured as Hermione in the first battle. Hermione doesn't know it, but she's suffered a slight concussion and is likely to pass out every now and then. She is in her hospital room, and Ron is watching her sleep. She had tried to get up, and had fainted.

He worries, even with Harry beside him now, and the Grangers, who were allowed in to see their daughter. He worries that the war will continue to be like this—that one of them will die.

He doesn't worry most about himself, and not even about Hermione, despite the fact that he has more than a friendly sort of affection for her, he worries more about Harry. Harry has come away from the first battle the least injured, and knows why.

Ron is afraid that his friend will do something reckless.


	2. Two

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**two.xy**

Hermione is luckier this time. It's cold outside, but two more Horcruxes have been located and destroyed. Hermione is supposed to know how many have been ruined, but at this point she forgets, especially now that Ron is so badly injured.

She hadn't thought much about _Sectumsempra_ since Harry cast the curse on Draco, but she thinks about it now that she isn't allowed into the makeshift hospital room at Hogwarts, where Ron lays. She looks in the bathroom mirror, above the sink in which she has just lost her insides, to see a colorless face looking back at her. The hair is limp and wavy and sticks to the face.

In the dark, the hair is colorless too.

**two.xx**

Ron realizes who he should have worried about now, but he doesn't care as he lays in bed, aching, and all bandaged up. He can't see any of his friends—they're not being allowed in—but he knows how they feel. Harry, as sad as he is for Ron's injury, must feel some sort of revulsion. He's been yelling since the last battle about the fact that no one is allowing him to defend himself. _Sectumsempra_ had been intended for Harry, not for Ron.

He looks at the little door outside of his room a lot as he lies in his four poster bed. He's slept here for the past seven years, and wanted to be in the bed, to sleep, but now he would rather be somewhere else.

Ron tries to get up, and it's painful, but he manages. He even makes it past the door, down the stairs, through the common room, and out of the entrance hole, and down the empty hallway, towards the Great Hall.

He smells bacon, and realizes how hungry he is, and straightens up, now walking at a trot.

And as he enters the Great Hall, a limp-haired female he barely recognizes exits it, and for a second, with all the gashes and bandages and bruises, she barely recognizes him. But upon turning back to look, both realize that they know the other, and Ron realizes that he's hungry for more.


	3. Three

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**three.xy**

She's tired, but her face is flushed from all sorts of things. It is late winter, and she's outside, and it's raining, so the cold is a factor, but she has also just got done having a blazing row with Ron.

She called him selfish and horrible and all sorts of things, because he didn't want her to fight, now that they were all tender words and holding hangs and nights by the fire doing nothing more than kissing. But he acts as if they've consummated their relationship, which they haven't, and he acts as if Hermione can't defend herself, which she can.

He's seen that in the past battle, and she's angry at him for telling her he doesn't want her to fight in the next one. She's angry at him because he loves her and just won't tell her. Telling her would make it easier on the both of them.

**three.xx**

He pulls her inside the abandoned school at three in the morning. She is as white as a ghost and freezing. He takes her to the fire, and in a moment he thinks perhaps she's lost it, in which case everyone is going to lose it, hence pallor appears on his face as well.

He tells her then, in her stupor, as he finds some firewhiskey that he's gotten from who-knows-where and gives her some to warm her up. And maybe it's the fact that he's had a little himself that makes him say it, but when he does he means it.

Hermione answers Ron with the same words, and before he knows it, he's kissing her, or maybe she's kissing him, even though they both taste like firewhiskey.

When he pulls away later, he notices that her color is back, and feels that his is too by the hotness of his ears. But there's not much time for observing, because next thing, she's saying something about his ears turning red, and kissing him in all the wrong places, but he doesn't care, because it's Hermione, and he loves her.


	4. Four

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**four.xy**

There are some things that even Hermione doesn't know, and one of those things is where the final Horcrux is. Ginny actually gives a good idea, and when the Order tries to destroy it, they figure out that it is, or rather was, indeed a Horcrux. No one dies in this battle.

She knows that only one thing is left in their way to peace, and that is Voldemort.

It is late May now, and she's actually laughing for once. Ron is a rather ghastly shade of white, however. They're in the Hogwarts hospital wing, and her father is trying to have a rather serious talk with Ron as she lies in the bed and smiles.

But her smile falters as she looks over at a nearby window and sees a fly, trapped in the space between the screen and the pane, near dead. A few months ago she could have cared less, but now that they've lost so much, she knows that even small, annoying lives are significant.

Even with all her toes broken, she crawls out of the bed and opens the window, letting the fly buzz around the room as Ron, surprised, helps her back to her bed. Harry is across the room, passed out. He has been since the battle ended—he was terribly injured—but he'll be fine in a few days, they've been told.

Her father goes to kill the fly, but she tells him no, and watches as it returns to the window, where it will be trapped once more when night falls and Mrs. Weasley gets worried that Hermione and Harry shall catch cold.

**four.xx**

One more battle and it could be the worst yet, Ron thinks as he leaves the small graveyard in the town to return to Hogwarts, the late spring air blowing in his face. And even though he's already lost Fred, he knows that it will be the worst.

The Death Eaters didn't kill Fred in any battle. Fred killed himself. Fred was funny and nice and brave, but he couldn't run a ruined shop and he couldn't joke with an angry twin brother and he couldn't marry a dead almost fiancé. So what was left?

Ron worries about himself more now than he used to. He worries about Hermione, and then about himself.

He can't worry about Harry when Harry has a concussion.


	5. Final

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**final.xy**

She blinks amid the flashes of green and runs toward the small crowd. Everything is happening in slow motion—she's noticing all the little things. She notices the exact moment the Death Eaters stop fighting. She notices the way Tonks falls, and how the way she lands is unnatural. She notices Ginny, who's not even supposed to be there, and how her expression is odd, and she knows the exact moment at which a cut she just received begins to bleed.

She does not notice where Voldemort goes when he dies, whether he just disappeared or stayed like normal people or if he said anything at all until the next day when everyone fills the others in. She does not notice that Harry is indeed passed out and that's why he's not Apparating back with them, that's why someone has to take him. She just notices one thing—who is alive and who isn't out of those that matter to her.

Ron's face is drained of color when they Apparate to the Burrow, and everyone hugs and laughs and kisses and eats and drinks and goes to bed. When those lost are spoken of, everyone remains silent and frowns or cries.

Hermione does a lot of crying in the next few days. She has a lot of serious talks with many people. When Harry wakes up, he retells the story, because it's his that matters, and has a few interviews which he actually seems to enjoy. Hermione wonders what will happen when his famousness fades. Heroes will always be heroes, but they're not remembered for long after they've accomplished their goal except in history books, after all.

She will fade into the background of life, and live to an old age. She will see her red-haired children off to the same magical school that she went to. Except, at this point in her life, she doesn't even know what she wants for breakfast tomorrow morning, let alone who she's going to marry, and she likes it that way.

Now, she doesn't have to know all the answers.

**final.xx**

Ron, on the other hand, has a good idea of what will happen in the future. He looks at old pictures of himself years ago and smiles, faintly, remembering those times. He hadn't thought himself innocent then, but now he does.

He wants to grow up, he decides, and normally that wouldn't be the sort of thing one could do in one night, but as soon as Voldemort is destroyed, that night, when he decides this, he does wake up the next morning an adult. He isn't in awe at this. Hermione has been a woman for ages now, hasn't she? And that's when he realizes it—he knows what his future holds, and it's in her, even with Harry and Ginny, whose relationship has been official much longer, still working things out.

He still has his boyish qualities that stick with any man throughout life. He has trouble deciding how to go about things, still, and can get nervous. He doesn't know when he'll have another serious talk with Hermione's father, but he knows what they'll talk about.

The night after the final battle, his bedroom window is shut, despite the fact that it is June. It's raining outside. Outside, he sees the colorless world of night, but somehow he notices the minute detail of a fly trapped between the screen and the pane of his window. He reflects on a time after a battle, once, when Hermione was in a bed at Hogwarts, with Harry across the room, when she stumbled out of bed and rescued a fly from a window, not allowing her father to kill it. He had helped her back to bed then, thinking that whatever potions she had been given to numb her pain had made her a little loopy, but now as he sees the fly, he feels a need to open the window and let it fly free to wherever it pleases.

And he does. He opens the pane and then the screen and lets it fly free. He quickly closes both and looks at his reflection in the glass before him. He notices a figure approach from behind him, and next thing he knows, she's kissing him in all what have become the right places, and he cares so much, because it's Hermione, and he loves her.


End file.
